Local Heroes

Sandra Yates of Granada Hills arrived at Northridge Hospital Medical Center on Thursday afternoon with tales of searching for her newborn in the hospital emergency room in the hours after the devastating Northridge earthquake struck on Jan. 17 five years ago.

Jerry Prezioso came to reflect on how city Firefighter Mike Henry pulled him from the rubble of the collapsed Northridge Meadows Apartments.

Mimi Cowan showed up to share her memories of how difficult it was to do her job as an orthopedic nurse in a ward crammed with patients and without running water.

They all had come to the hospital’s Roscoe Boulevard building to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the quake and to salute the medical staff, local officials and emergency rescue personnel for their efforts following the deadly temblor.

The event, “Our Heroes: Northridge Hospital Medical Center Remembers,” kicked off a weeklong remembrance of the quake that killed 57 people and caused $40 billion in damage, much of it near the epicenter in the San Fernando Valley. Other events include a 20-mile bike ride Saturday that begins and ends at Cal State Northridge.

For Thursday’s noontime ceremony, the top level of a parking deck at the hospital was transformed into a roof garden where former Gov. Pete Wilson, Mayor Richard Riordan, County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and City Councilwoman Laura Chick munched hors d’oeuvres with hospital staff members, community leaders and families under a white tent as smooth jazz softly played in the background.

Sitting at a table with her husband, Michael, and daughters Alexandra, 7, and Mariah, 5, Yates told a reporter how she was jolted awake by the earthquake at 4:31 a.m. and the terror she felt knowing that Mariah, then a newborn, was recovering from a respiratory infection in the neonatal unit at the hospital.

“I am a nurse and I knew the cribs in the unit were on wheels,” Yates said. “I kept thinking that she was rolling all over the place.”

She and her husband, faced with severe problems in their neighborhood, waited seven hours after the quake hit before leaving their home on Classics Drive to go to the hospital. The street in front of their home was flooded after a nearby water tank burst, and Rinaldi Street and Balboa Boulevard--the main streets near their home--were closed because a broken gas main had set a truck afire.

“We did not want to go out into the streets to make things worse,” Yates said. “We wanted to make sure it was OK to go.”

When they arrived at the hospital, Yates said they found “a mess. Reseda [Boulevard] was blocked with paramedics and firetrucks. There were triage units in the parking lot. Injured people were all over the place.”

Frantically, the Yateses searched for Mariah. “A physician directed me to where the babies were. They were all bundled up under a desk. There was a big piece of tape on [Mariah’s] forehead with her last name on it.”

The physician put the baby into Yates’ arms, handed her enough medical supplies for two days and told her to make an appointment “when things calm down.”

Quake survivor Prezioso said Thursday he was very happy to be alive. He recalled being trapped from the waist down in rubble after a section of his three-story apartment complex collapsed into his first-floor unit, crushing his leg and piercing his abdomen with nails.

“The pressure [from the rubble] acted as a tourniquet so I didn’t bleed to death,” he said. “The firefighters told me that they literally used an air bag to lift up the two stories to get me out.”

Even after the temblor, orthopedic nurse Cowan said hospital employees still had to contend with a series of aftershocks.

“I remember I was helping [a surgeon] to cast a patient’s leg and an aftershock hit and he said, ‘Don’t let go. Hold it still’ and I said, ‘I’m trying.’ ”

Following lunch, the celebrants gathered for a formal ceremony at the far end of the tent.

“Like so many Angelenos, I picked myself up off the floor, shook my head and thought, ‘What is the mayor supposed to do?’ ” Riordan said in his remarks.

The mayor said he put on his sweats, went to an operations center at City Hall and began barking commands in an effort to get the city moving again.

“In government it is infinitely easier to get forgiveness than permission,” he recalled telling city officials tangled in red tape. “Just do it!

“From that moment, they knew they were empowered to make things happen,” he said. “This was a turning point in L.A.: What we did in this earthquake helped to restore our confidence.”